PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2024

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://elpais.com/economia/2024-06-02/la-loteria-de-las-renovables-dibuja-un-nuevo-futuro-para-la-industria-en-espana.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.diariovasco.com/gipuzkoa/tormenta-perfecta-vivienda-gipuzkoa-20240602071106-nt.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.abc.es/sociedad/cien-dias-ninguna-respuesta-tras-incendio-valencia-20240602185734-nt.html

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/05/a-new-way-to-see-viruses-in-action




https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Borealis



https://www.freepik.es/vector-premium/mapa-constelacion-corona-borealis-ilustracion-vectorial_42869283.htm



http://www.totastronomia.com/2012/07/el-poeta-catalan-verdaguer-y-el-pintor.html


Al más puro estilo: Una usted los puntos... 



http://cuentosmagicosblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/pulgarcito-charles-perrault.html



https://www.infobae.com/opinion/2022/02/13/el-hilo-de-ariadna/



https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_casa_de_Asteri%C3%B3n



https://es.linkedin.com/pulse/coge-el-toro-por-los-cuernos-navarro-elias



https://www.lavanguardia.com/cribeo/viral/20200110/472804730089/explicacion-aparicion-cuernos-diablo-amanecer-qatar.html



































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[ OFF-TOPIC/ (Por si acaso...  ) ]

[sargento.algodon]

https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2024-06-02/alineacion-6-planetas-junio-cuando-ver-espana_3895027/

Alineación de 6 planetas en junio: por qué es inusual y qué día se da este fenómeno

"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longed lived, They would never really die."
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

[Derby]

https://annpettifor.substack.com/p/time-to-tighten-financial-seatbelts

Time to tighten financial seatbelts?

Interest rate hikes as a guide



In the run-up to the Great Financial Crisis I repeatedly warned that high real central bank rates of interest were like ‘a dagger aimed at a bubble of debt’. As I wrote on the Open Democracy site in 2003 in a piece titled The Coming First World Debt Crisis:

When interest rates begin to rise again, when debt costs soar both for corporates and households, when defaults and bankruptcies increase more rapidly than now, then the tipping point will be reached.

The point about the impact of higher interest rates is well illustrated by the above FT chart published after the GFC.

The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England began hiking rates in 2004. Alan (‘the Maestro’) Greenspan and the Federal Open Market Committee hiked aggressively each quarter. They did so until the dagger burst the bubble of debt in August 2007.

I was reminded of their decisions by a chart posted by the Bank of England this last week. The Bank, led by an overtly political governor, Andrew Bailey, began hiking in February, 2022 and since then Monetary Policy Committee members have hiked higher and faster than the Federal Reserve between 2004-2007.



Now we know that levels of public and private debt as a share of global income (GDP) were high in 2007 when the Great Financial Crisis broke. Back then, public debt was 61% of global GDP; private debt was 134 % of GDP; and the total of both public and private debt was 193% of GDP.

We also know that debt is global. High UK rates impact debtors from afar. Many US and Australian-based so-called ‘Private Equity’ firms have, since the GFC, dumped large amounts of debt on UK companies, including Thames Water, ASDA, Morrisons, the AA and Liverpool football club.

It took just four years for the dagger of high real rates of interest to burst the 2007 debt bubble.

Since then, and going into the pandemic, volumes of both public and private debt have expanded according to the IMF.



Today, global private and public debt is near 250% of global income.



The Bank of England began the latest round of interest rate hikes in December, 2021. Subsequent hikes have been more rapid and more brutal than the Fed’s hikes over three years to 2007.

December, 2024 will mark three years since the Bank of England began raising rates.

Who knows what will happen then?

Given recent history, it might be wise to tighten your financial seatbelts.

[Derby]

https://stevesaretsky.substack.com/p/no-panacea

No Panacea

Happy Monday morning!

Housing affordability, or lack thereof, is all the rage these days. Politicians from every colour of the political rainbow are rallying around restoring some semblance of price stability, or so they say.

They’ve been working hard lately, through mass rezoning, tax breaks on new rental construction, and even housing catalogues. In fact, billions of dollars are being thrown at the problem.

How will we know if any of it worked? For most people they’d tell you housing affordability will have been achieved when prices are lower.

However, in a recent podcast interview with The Globe & Mail, Trudeau said the quiet part out loud.

For affordability to improve, do home prices have to come down?

“No. I think housing prices and houses will always be valuable in this country,” but “anyone who hopes for housing prices to remain on the kind of trajectory they’ve been on over the past decade or two should maybe think about what kind of society or world they want to live in.”

On the other hand, “housing needs to retain its value,” because “it’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future and nest egg.”



In other words, everyone wants affordable housing but nobody wants their house to become affordable.

Trudeau just reiterated what we already knew. Housing is politically backstopped, and we must not jeopardize the 30 year bull market. After all, the tax free primary residence has become the defacto retirement plan for most boomers.

Inflating home prices have also been a boon for government coffers. The tax revenues derived from housing via capital gains taxes, property transfer taxes, development fees and property taxes are what underpin the entire system.

Trudeau’s freudian slip was an admission of what we already knew, maintaining home prices is a matter of national security.

So how else do we achieve housing affordability? We are told we can build our way out, yet housing starts are crashing as we speak, despite billions being thrown at municipalities to unlock zoning.

Over in the orange corner, Jagmeet says we should build affordable housing on all federally owned land. However, an analysis from the Globe & Mail this week highlights the grim reality.

Using the government’s federal registry of properties, The Globe identified federally-owned land that is at least half an acre in size, sitting vacant or occupied by a building not more than two storeys, and located in municipalities with at least 10,000 people.

After a months-long analysis, The Globe found 613 pieces of lazy land in cities and towns across the country – a collection of federal real estate large enough to create about 288,000 new housing units.

In other words, if we took all the under utilized federally owned land and redeveloped it for affordable housing we would create 288,000 new housing units which is the equivalent to just over a years worth of completions in any given year.

So now what?

If we could get incomes to rise faster than house prices, over a long enough period of time, housing could slowly get more affordable. But that is no quick fix, and everyone is looking for quick fixes.

The fact that real GDP per capita has now been declining for seven consecutive quarters isn’t helping that idea either. According to RBC we are now marred in what appears to be a lost decade.



People don’t like to hear this but there really is no panacea for housing in this country. This is just the uncomfortable truth.

Housing affordability will ultimately be achieved through some form of an exogenous shock outside of the governments control, creating a temporary over supply of housing and lower prices. Kind of like what we’re experiencing now with an inflationary shock that ripped interest rates higher and will probably keep them there for the foreseeable future, regardless of what the BoC does this week.

[Derby]

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/23/why-a-stronger-dollar-is-dangerous

Finance and economics | Battles to come
Why a stronger dollar is dangerous

It sets the stage for a nasty new Trump-China clash, among other things


Photograph: Getty Images

The dollar is looking increasingly formidable. As American growth has stayed strong and investors have scaled back bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, money has flooded into the country’s markets—and the greenback has shot up. It has risen by 4% this year, measured against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, and the fundamentals point to further appreciation. With a presidential election looming, and both Democrats and Republicans determined to promote American manufacturing, the world is on the verge of a difficult new period of strong-dollar geopolitics.

This situation is made still more difficult by the fact that the currency’s strength reflects weakness elsewhere. By the end of 2023, America’s economy was 8% larger than at the end of 2019. Those of Britain, France, Germany and Japan each grew by less than 2% during the same period. The yen is at a 34-year low against the dollar. The euro has dropped to $1.07 from $1.10 at the start of the year (see chart 1). Some traders are now betting that the pair will reach parity by the beginning of next year.



Should Donald Trump win in November, the scene is therefore set for a fight. A strong dollar tends to raise the price of American exports and lower the price of imports, which would widen the country’s persistent trade deficit—a bugbear of Mr Trump’s for many decades. Robert Lighthizer, the architect of tariffs against China during Mr Trump’s time in the White House, wants to weaken the dollar, according to Politico, a news website. President Joe Biden has made no public pronouncements on the currency, but a strong dollar complicates his manufacturing agenda.

Elsewhere, a mighty greenback is good for exporters that have costs denominated in other currencies. But high American interest rates and a strong dollar generate imported inflation, which is now exacerbated by relatively high oil prices. In addition, companies that have borrowed in dollars face steeper repayments. On April 18th Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, warned about the impact of these developments on global financial stability.

Many countries have ample foreign-exchange reserves that they could sell to bolster their currencies: Japan has $1.3trn, India $643bn and South Korea $419bn. Yet any relief would be temporary. Although sales slowed the strengthening of the dollar in 2022, when the Fed began raising interest rates, they did not stop it. Central banks and finance ministries are loth to waste their holdings on fruitless fights.

Another option is international co-ordination to halt the greenback’s climb. The start of this was on display on April 16th, when the finance ministers of America, Japan and South Korea expressed concern about the slump of the yen and won. This may be the precursor to more intervention—in the form of joint sales of foreign-exchange reserves—to prevent the two Asian currencies from weakening further.

But as much as these countries may want to be on the same page, economics is unavoidably pulling them apart. After all, yen and won weakness is driven by the gap in interest rates between America and other countries. South Korea’s two-year government bonds offer a return of around 3.5%, and Japan’s just 0.3%, while American Treasuries maturing at the same time offer 5% (see chart 2). If interest rates stay markedly higher in America, investors seeking returns face a straightforward choice—and their decisions will buttress the dollar.



Then there are countries with which America is less likely to co-operate. According to Goldman Sachs, a bank, China saw $39bn or so in foreign-exchange outflows in March as investors fled the country’s languishing economy—the fourth most of any month since 2016. The yuan has weakened steadily against the dollar since the beginning of the year, and more rapidly from mid-March, since when the dollar has risen from 7.18 yuan to 7.25. Bank of America expects it to reach 7.45 by September, when America’s election campaign will be in full flow. That would put the yuan at its weakest since 2007, providing a boost to China’s government’s latest export drive. Cheap Chinese electric vehicles may be about to become even cheaper, infuriating American politicians.

Even protectionists in America may be willing to overlook allies’ weak currencies, at least for a time. They are less likely to for China. This raises the risk of further tariffs and sanctions, and maybe even the return of China to America’s list of currency manipulators. So long as America’s economy outperforms, the dollar is likely to remain strong. And so long as American politicians see that as a cause for concern, trade tensions will rise. ■

[sudden and sharp]

https://stevesaretsky.substack.com/p/no-panacea

No Panacea

Happy Monday morning!

Housing affordability, or lack thereof, is all the rage these days. Politicians from every colour of the political rainbow are rallying around restoring some semblance of price stability, or so they say.

They’ve been working hard lately, through mass rezoning, tax breaks on new rental construction, and even housing catalogues. In fact, billions of dollars are being thrown at the problem.

How will we know if any of it worked? For most people they’d tell you housing affordability will have been achieved when prices are lower.

However, in a recent podcast interview with The Globe & Mail, Trudeau said the quiet part out loud.

For affordability to improve, do home prices have to come down?

“No. I think housing prices and houses will always be valuable in this country,” but “anyone who hopes for housing prices to remain on the kind of trajectory they’ve been on over the past decade or two should maybe think about what kind of society or world they want to live in.”

On the other hand, “housing needs to retain its value,” because “it’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future and nest egg.”



In other words, everyone wants affordable housing but nobody wants their house to become affordable.

Trudeau just reiterated what we already knew. Housing is politically backstopped, and we must not jeopardize the 30 year bull market. After all, the tax free primary residence has become the defacto retirement plan for most boomers.

Inflating home prices have also been a boon for government coffers. The tax revenues derived from housing via capital gains taxes, property transfer taxes, development fees and property taxes are what underpin the entire system.

Trudeau’s freudian slip was an admission of what we already knew, maintaining home prices is a matter of national security.

So how else do we achieve housing affordability? We are told we can build our way out, yet housing starts are crashing as we speak, despite billions being thrown at municipalities to unlock zoning.

Over in the orange corner, Jagmeet says we should build affordable housing on all federally owned land. However, an analysis from the Globe & Mail this week highlights the grim reality.

Using the government’s federal registry of properties, The Globe identified federally-owned land that is at least half an acre in size, sitting vacant or occupied by a building not more than two storeys, and located in municipalities with at least 10,000 people.

After a months-long analysis, The Globe found 613 pieces of lazy land in cities and towns across the country – a collection of federal real estate large enough to create about 288,000 new housing units.

In other words, if we took all the under utilized federally owned land and redeveloped it for affordable housing we would create 288,000 new housing units which is the equivalent to just over a years worth of completions in any given year.

So now what?

If we could get incomes to rise faster than house prices, over a long enough period of time, housing could slowly get more affordable. But that is no quick fix, and everyone is looking for quick fixes.

The fact that real GDP per capita has now been declining for seven consecutive quarters isn’t helping that idea either. According to RBC we are now marred in what appears to be a lost decade.



People don’t like to hear this but there really is no panacea for housing in this country. This is just the uncomfortable truth.

Housing affordability will ultimately be achieved through some form of an exogenous shock outside of the governments control, creating a temporary over supply of housing and lower prices. Kind of like what we’re experiencing now with an inflationary shock that ripped interest rates higher and will probably keep them there for the foreseeable future, regardless of what the BoC does this week.

¡Sorpresa!       

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/cbb9b949-1262-4d72-9ee7-6035c3e022d2

Fed official says interest rates should stay on hold for ‘extended’ time

Neel Kashkari warns cutting too early could risk US economic prosperity

A top Federal Reserve official has called for interest rates to stay on hold for an “extended” time, saying lowering borrowing costs before inflation was under control would put the foundations of US prosperity at risk.

Neel Kashkari, Minneapolis Fed president, also told the FT podcast The Economics Show that Americans’ “visceral” hatred of inflation meant that some people would prefer a recession to a jump in prices.

“The economy is, in the US, quite strong, the labour market is strong, inflation is coming down and many, many people are deeply unhappy about the status of the economy,” he said. “I think it’s because of the high inflation that they’ve experienced.”(...)

[Derby]

¡Sorpresa!       

 

[Vipamo]

https://stevesaretsky.substack.com/p/no-panacea

No Panacea

Happy Monday morning!

Housing affordability, or lack thereof, is all the rage these days. Politicians from every colour of the political rainbow are rallying around restoring some semblance of price stability, or so they say.

They’ve been working hard lately, through mass rezoning, tax breaks on new rental construction, and even housing catalogues. In fact, billions of dollars are being thrown at the problem.

How will we know if any of it worked? For most people they’d tell you housing affordability will have been achieved when prices are lower.

However, in a recent podcast interview with The Globe & Mail, Trudeau said the quiet part out loud.

For affordability to improve, do home prices have to come down?

“No. I think housing prices and houses will always be valuable in this country,” but “anyone who hopes for housing prices to remain on the kind of trajectory they’ve been on over the past decade or two should maybe think about what kind of society or world they want to live in.”

On the other hand, “housing needs to retain its value,” because “it’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future and nest egg.”



In other words, everyone wants affordable housing but nobody wants their house to become affordable.

Trudeau just reiterated what we already knew. Housing is politically backstopped, and we must not jeopardize the 30 year bull market. After all, the tax free primary residence has become the defacto retirement plan for most boomers.

Inflating home prices have also been a boon for government coffers. The tax revenues derived from housing via capital gains taxes, property transfer taxes, development fees and property taxes are what underpin the entire system.

Trudeau’s freudian slip was an admission of what we already knew, maintaining home prices is a matter of national security.

So how else do we achieve housing affordability? We are told we can build our way out, yet housing starts are crashing as we speak, despite billions being thrown at municipalities to unlock zoning.

Over in the orange corner, Jagmeet says we should build affordable housing on all federally owned land. However, an analysis from the Globe & Mail this week highlights the grim reality.

Using the government’s federal registry of properties, The Globe identified federally-owned land that is at least half an acre in size, sitting vacant or occupied by a building not more than two storeys, and located in municipalities with at least 10,000 people.

After a months-long analysis, The Globe found 613 pieces of lazy land in cities and towns across the country – a collection of federal real estate large enough to create about 288,000 new housing units.

In other words, if we took all the under utilized federally owned land and redeveloped it for affordable housing we would create 288,000 new housing units which is the equivalent to just over a years worth of completions in any given year.

So now what?

If we could get incomes to rise faster than house prices, over a long enough period of time, housing could slowly get more affordable. But that is no quick fix, and everyone is looking for quick fixes.

The fact that real GDP per capita has now been declining for seven consecutive quarters isn’t helping that idea either. According to RBC we are now marred in what appears to be a lost decade.



People don’t like to hear this but there really is no panacea for housing in this country. This is just the uncomfortable truth.

Housing affordability will ultimately be achieved through some form of an exogenous shock outside of the governments control, creating a temporary over supply of housing and lower prices. Kind of like what we’re experiencing now with an inflationary shock that ripped interest rates higher and will probably keep them there for the foreseeable future, regardless of what the BoC does this week.

¡Sorpresa!       

Gracias por traer este artículo Sudden. Al final ese es el quid de la cuestión.
Una bajada de precios en los hactibos significa una pérdida de patrimonio de gran parte de los actores. ¿Cómo va a interesar jorobar a una mayoría (gente con ladrillo), para mejorar a una minoría (jóvenes sin ladrillo pero que heredarán)?

[Derby]

Se veía venir, verdad? 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-03/blackstone-s-59-billion-property-trust-hit-by-starwood-fallout

Blackstone’s $59 Billion Property Trust Hit by Starwood Fallout


Property trusts have come under heightened pressure as real estate values have plunged.Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

A $59 billion Blackstone Inc. property trust is contending with the fallout from a rival’s decision to enforce stricter limits on investors.

Repurchase requests by investors in Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust ticked up in May, according to a shareholder letter Monday, after rival Starwood Real Estate Income Trust tightened limits. Starwood’s decision further chilled investor sentiment about a real estate sector hammered by rising rates.

BREIT’s board agreed to allow the trust to exceed a 2% monthly limit in order to be able to fulfill all of its withdrawal requests in May. In both April and May, BREIT has returned about 4.4% of its net asset value to investors.

The trust has “no plans” to change its share repurchase program, according to the letter.

Property trusts have come under heightened pressure as real estate values have plunged. Last month, the $10 billion Starwood Real Estate Income Trust capped monthly redemptions at 0.33% of net asset value, down from its previous 2% monthly limit, as it faced a liquidity crunch.

Blackstone President Jon Gray said Starwood’s issues led more BREIT investors to ask for their money back.

“There’s been some news based on this SREIT dynamic that creates some increase in redemptions, but nothing like what we experienced back in the beginning of 2023,” Gray said at an investor conference in May.

BREIT’s outflow requests began to rise in late 2022 and the trust had to impose its limits as interest rates climbed and real estate values fell, threatening returns for investors in the trust that had been a major growth engine for Blackstone. In March, BREIT marked what appeared to be a milestone and allowed investors to withdraw as much as they wanted.

The firm said its requests declined until the last two weeks of May 2024, when SREIT set more restrictive limits on redemptions. Blackstone, without mentioning the REIT by name, tried to set itself apart from Starwood’s vehicle. BREIT said in the shareholder letter that its portfolio and liquidity — it can tap into about $7.5 billion — is “materially different” to its rival and cited its bets on data centers and student housing.

Total net returns at the Blackstone trust have fallen sharply since borrowing costs began climbing in early 2022. A popular share class of BREIT gained 2.2% through April of this year after a 0.5% loss in 2023.

The Starwood trust generated a total return of 1.67% this year through April, following a loss of 8.6% in 2023.

[Derby]

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/06/03/financial-capital-is-not-scarce-so-why-do-we-pay-so-much-for-it/

Financial capital is not scarce, so why do we pay so much for it?

(...)This is a situation which Keynes has said has outlived its usefulness. It's time that we imagined a world where low interest rates were there in perpetuity and we worked out how to manage capital better.

Not so that money goes into stupid things, like pushing up the price of shares or the price of homes inappropriately, but into the productive well-being of the economy, so that we have the technology we need to meet our needs.

And our needs are really big, because without investment, we can't manage climate change.

And these issues are intimately related.

[sudden and sharp]

¡Sorpresa!       

 

Es un "sinvivir".... 






Desplomes del 99% en Wall Street: decenas de errores técnicos desatan un caos en las cotizaciones de la bolsa de Nueva York
https://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/12846501/06/24/berkshire-hathaway-cayendo-un-99-decenas-de-errores-tecnicos-se-apoderan-de-cotizaciones-de-wall-street.html

La firma de Warren Buffett no ha sido la única, de hecho está habiendo problemas en cerca de una docena de empresas. Destaca el caso de la cotización de Chipotle Mexican Grill, de Horace Mann Educators o Franco-Nevada. Los fallos se producen una semana después de que cambiaran las bolsas de valores de EEUU a un acuerdo de un día. El jueves, un error informático impidió que los precios imprimiendo en el mayor índice bursátil de EE. UU. durante más de una hora, pero no afectó a las acciones individuales y resultó sólo en menores interrupciones.

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LOS INFORMÁTICOS: Ha probado a apagar y volver a encender??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=dVM1-WayX7s